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Into History.

com. It's January 30th, 1925 in Southwest Kentucky.

Cave Explorer Floyd Collins is 55 feet underground.

By the flickering light of a kerosene lantern, he scrapes rock from the side of a narrow crevas with a crowbar.

It's painstaking work to give Floyd just centimeters more space.

He's in such tight quarters it would give the average person instant

intense claustrophobia, but for Floyd is just another day at work. He's

been exploring caves around Kentucky since he was six years old.

Now 38, he's been working for weeks to expand this tunnel in search of a cave so beautiful and majestic

that tourists will come from all over the world to see it and pay him good money for the privilege.

Floyd scoops up the loose rock he's chipped away and puts it into burlap sack.

He sets it aside to be taken to the surface, and with this section of the cave slightly widened, he decides to move deeper in.

Floyd wiggles first down a narrow fissure through the limestone.

A trickle of cold water dribbles down alongside

him dampening his shirt. At the bottom Floyd finds a hole with a cool breeze whistling

through it. It's a promising lead and a search for a larger cave but it can wait.

Lloyd is tired besides to call it a day.

Pulling himself back up the limestone fissure, he comes to an especially tight spot.

But as he's maneuvering his limbs to squeeze through,

...